ST. LOUIS — On Aug. 22, 2012, less than five months before Rick Majerus died of heart failure in Los Angeles, tragedy rocked Jim Crews’ world. Twice.

Crews was in the parking lot outside Chaifetz Arena, home to the Saint Louis University Billikens, when the first call came. Army 1st Lt. Eric Zastoudil, whom Crews had coached at West Point, had stepped on an IED in Afghanistan and had his left leg blown apart. A shaken Crews walked into a team meeting. As he rose to leave less than an hour later, his cell rang again: 1st Lt. Tyrell Thompson, another former player, had collapsed on a basketball court in Fort Lee, Va., and died. This was two months after Capt. Scott Pace, an Army pilot and former player under Crews, was shot down from his plane over Afghanistan and killed.

It was two days before Crews was named interim coach at SLU, while his longtime friend Majerus was fighting for his life.

There’s a narrative attached to Sporting News’ College Basketball Coach of the Year, and it goes something like this: Jim Crews led his band of overachievers from the depths of Majerus’ passing to the heights of an Atlantic 10 championship. For the most part, it’s accurate; the Billikens are 24-6 and riding high with the No. 16 ranking entering their A-10 Tournament quarterfinal game on Friday afternoon.

Crews struggles to speak about last August—about the losses of players he cared for and of a coach, his friend for three decades, whom he loved. During a lengthy interview with Sporting News that's spent walking laps around the Chaifetz concourse, emotions are on the sleeve of the 59-year-old who coached 17 years at Evansville and seven years at Army.

“We were just watching film from last year’s La Salle game,” Crews says, “and there’s Rick on the sideline and he’s making a signal, and the sweater goes up and you see that big old belly ...”

The pause comes hard.

“Rick was authentic. His friendship and coaching were temporary things, but his lessons are permanent and the memories bring a smile to your face. And sometimes the opposite emotion.”

BE IN THE MOMENT

Crews read a multiple-choice poll question in a magazine once: What are you really looking forward to in life? A majority of readers had answered tomorrow. This made no sense to Crews then and doesn’t to this day.

“Tomorrow never comes!” he says. “Try to have a good day today and make the best of it.”

This was the loudest and clearest of Crews’ messages to the team in those first days after he took the reins of the program. It was his own slant on the tenets espoused by Majerus: Work hard, move forward through adversity and always have a zest for life.

“There was a lot of ambiguity and confusion at the time,” says junior forward Dwayne Evans, referring to the team’s understanding of Majerus’ medical condition. Of course, players were worried and sad, too. “But he told us, ‘Though you’re facing a lot of adversity, it’s not an excuse to have any letdowns or to miss a beat.’ ”

Not just any group of players could’ve met such expectations, but this already was a special group. Majerus had brought them to SLU not only for their basketball talent but also because each of them, the coach believed, was hard-working and well-grounded by nature. And they’d rewarded the iconic coach with 26 wins—and deep feelings of togetherness—in what proved to be Majerus’ final season. Many of you will remember the emotional press conference after the Billikens were knocked from the NCAA Tournament last March.

Majerus died on Dec. 1. Less than 24 hours later, SLU began a nine-game winning streak. After they dropped back-to-back games for a 1-2 start in Atlantic 10 play, the players gathered, discussed matters and resolved to dig even deeper.

“I don’t condone losing,” says junior forward Jake Barnett, “but I think those two games were a wakeup call. At that point, I’m not sure if we were all as bought in as we could be.”

An 11-game winning streak followed, during which SLU appeared in the AP top 25 in consecutive weeks for the first time since the 1993-94 season.

As the national attention grew—and as this baseball town’s interest in the Billikens surged—Crews infused the team with a second strong message: “Don’t buy into the noise. Look at the guy to your left. Look at the guy to your right. That’s who you’re playing for.”

“I think we do have a team that really cares about the guy to the left and the guy to the right,” he says.

They play together and with a constant urgency. One can’t watch the Billikens and not come away believing they play harder than most.

“They play uncommonly hard. They do that very, very well,” Crews says. “All you can do is the best you can do, and I think these guys come as close to doing the best they can do as anybody.

“They’re quietly incredible.”

STILL AN INTERIM COACH

The Billikens play defense face-first—an all-out approach that has yielded a conference-low 58.4 points per game. Their offense doesn’t do shootouts, either; leading scorer Evans ranks 18th in the A-10 at 12.9 points per game. Statistically, Evans, Kwamain Mitchell, Mike McCall Jr., Cody Ellis and the rest are all bunched together. Certainly, no one on this team stands out.

That’s probably the biggest reason outsiders looking on in admiration refer to these players as overachievers. The basketball world still doesn’t know the Billikens very well at all, does it? It’s easier to put them in a nice little box.

“I don’t think we win this many games the last two years without talent,” Evans says.

But what the players tend to consider backhanded praise, Crews embraces.

“We’ve got good players,” he says, “but, if it’s true these guys are overachievers, what better compliment can you get in the world?”

Coming Wednesday: Sporting News announces 2012-13 player of the year

That’s partly what makes Crews’ own success fascinating. Is he overachieving, too? In 17 seasons as coach at Evansville, he won a single NCAA Tournament game—or 18 fewer than Majerus’ career total. From 2002-09 at Army, Crews’ teams were 59-140. Granted, West Point hadn’t seen a winning season since 1984-85 (this year’s team finished 16-15), but that’s not a record that screams “hire me.”

That brings us to Chris May. How could SLU’s athletics director not seize the opportunity to promote a national coach of the year into a permanent gig? But it might not happen.

May is unwilling to commit to Crews beyond the current season, at least publicly. Likewise, Crews will not discuss his coaching future or even indicate whether he desires the SLU job.

It’s certainly possible Crews hopes to win big in March and fade into the sunset, but really? Crews is 59 and in good health. SLU has excellent facilities and ever-improving support from alumni and fans. And the Billikens will have four senior starters next season—a chance to chase history. If Crews doesn’t want this job, it’s a real head-scratcher.

It’s more believable that May still has his doubts about Crews, who, it should be mentioned, was fired at Army amid reports he’d verbally abused a Cadet.

“There weren’t any concerns about that,” May says. “When you do your due diligence on Jim Crews, you find that, in the industry of basketball, he’s a highly respected individual. And he’s an unbelievable person to be with and work with.”

May’s take on Crews’ performance as interim coach is no less flattering: “Outstanding by any measure. Jim came and has taken over a challenging opportunity and has just done a great job with it. ... There’s no question he was the right guy and did a spectacular job for this program.”

It could be that May simply is abiding by Crews’ inclination to remain fully in the moment, that when the A.D. says the school made a commitment to Crews for this season and leaves it at that, there’s nothing to read into.

“When the season’s over,” May says, “we’ll sit down and have a conversation with Jim about the future.”

Which way will this one go?

FINDING TEACHING MOMENTS

Crews is going in circles. Whenever he’s at Chaifetz and has a long phone call or a visit from a reporter, he walks the concourse. He calls it his “pathetic excuse for exercise.”

But it’s more than that: It’s an effort to make the most of the moment.

Crews was a senior and key contributor on the 1975-76 Indiana team that went 32-0, major-college basketball’s last undefeated champion. He then went to work for Bob Knight as a coach. For years, the pair taught a course on coaching that was attended by regular students: Crews would teach the X’s-and-O’s, and Knight would handle the bigger-picture stuff.

Vivid still for Crews is the memory of showing students film of the Hoosiers’ 86-68 victory over Michigan in the ’76 national title game. What the students saw as the culmination of a perfect season, Crews viewed as a teaching moment; there was far more insight to offer.

“Everything would be ‘perfect’ this and ‘perfect’ that,” he says, “and then we’d show them the film: Mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake, mistake. We weren’t perfect at all.”

Asked for his proudest moment this season, Crews points to his players’ effort in the next-to-last game of the regular season. It was at Xavier—an overtime loss in which the Billikens, at least to the untrained eye, didn’t seem to play well.

“That was pretty good,” he says with a broad smile. “They tried to do the right things. They kept moving forward. Rick would’ve been proud.”

Like the Hoosiers of old, the Billikens make mistakes but play together and with uncommon effort. That’s good enough for their interim coach. Crews is no perfectionist, but in 2012-13 he’s the best in the land.